Do you believe in God?

  • Thread starter Patrik
  • 24,489 comments
  • 1,140,812 views

Do you believe in god?

  • Of course, without him nothing would exist!

    Votes: 624 30.6%

  • Maybe.

    Votes: 368 18.0%

  • No way!

    Votes: 1,051 51.5%
  • Total voters
    2,042
EF12345678
And what about Jesus? He came down and affected thousands of people
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Millions, maybe billions were affected by the stories of the life of Jesus, no doubt. For the "came down" part in reference to being the Son of Sky Daddy Who Sees Your Most Private Itches one needs to provide some evidence that this happened.

EF12345678
Fine. Yes, obviously, none of the words written are physically written by God, so there probably is some info misinterpreted in the Bible, but were you alive to hear the word? No.
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And that's the difficulty. Would you accept being judged against in a Court of Law where there was a hearsay link like that? Or in a contract dispute over your property? No.

Despite that there seems to be an expectation that books written after-the-fact based on hearsay from people who were there-but-not-Jesus will become the de facto standard for truth, light and education in the world.

These are books claiming to be directed by the greatest super-celestial being in, or outside, or "of" the known or unknown universe... but they couldn't explain why it went dark at night.[/QUOTE]
 
TenEightyOne
Millions, maybe billions were affected by the stories of the life of Jesus, no doubt.
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Millions were affected by the stories of Bertie Wooster, Sherlock Holmes and Lord Peter Wimsey.

And yes, before I am quoted, people were affected in different ways but that proves that being 'affected' alone isn't really significant. As with every claim of spiritual interference, it would be nice if we could hear what exactly happened and what about that experience led one to such beliefs rather than "You just have to accept it" or "You just wouldn't understand".
 
Given that he's banned I don't think your going to get a comment back off him any time soon.

Any chance you could give us a heads-up as what exactly it is he sums up, given that 45 minutes if Aslan is pretty much guaranteed to be painful.
 
Just wanted to ask, how long left until his ban is lifted? @Scaff @Famine ?

Also, about the video. It's basically Aslan talking about how atheism is a belief and how he identifies himself as a Muslim yet says that Islam is man-made language used to 'express the inexpressible', in other words, a way to express faith.
 
SalmanBH
Just wanted to ask, how long left until his ban is lifted? @Scaff @Famine ?
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I doubt it'll be lifted after the deliberately misleading posts and wilful mutilation of the meanings of words. Well, that or attempting to have a debate about concepts that were well above his level of skill with the English language, but he vehemently denied that possibility.

Also, about the video. It's basically Aslan talking about how atheism is a belief and how he identifies himself as a Muslim yet says that Islam is man-made language used to 'express the inexpressible', in other words, a way to express faith.
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'A lack of belief is a belief.' What a ridiculous argument, it always makes me despair for the intellectual heritage of this era to see nonsense like that given any sort of media coverage. I'm glad I won't be alive in 200 years to hear everyone call us all stupid based on people like Aslan who can't understand how someone can live without believing (in a religious sense) one way or the other. Hopefully he's just confusing lack of belief for believing negatively, but if he is then he still has no right to discuss atheism on any meaningful level. I'm an atheist and I don't know whether God/god/gods/FSM/IPU exist or not, I think not as there's no evidence, but I don't believe (can one truly believe a negative without proof for the positive? Religious faith requires that there be no real evidence, sooo... :boggled:).
 
SalmanBH
It's basically Aslan talking about how atheism is a belief...
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And he defines atheism how? Some forms of what might be described as atheism do require belief. Most of them don't, and are defined by their lack of belief.

Without knowing what sort of people he's trying to describe with this, there's a very real danger of falling back into the redefinition of words trap again.

I'm sorry for not watching the video, but 45 minutes is way too long. There's no way he needs 45 minutes to describe what you can sum up in a few lines, so I'm not going to waste my time watching it.
 
SalmanBH
Just wanted to ask, how long left until his ban is lifted? @Scaff @Famine ?
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It will not be lifted.


SalmanBH
Also, about the video. It's basically Aslan talking about how atheism is a belief
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Its not, and nor did atheism lead to Maoism (as he claims - backing this claim up with nothing at all).

Yes I watched it, and he puts forward no evidence to support such a claim.


SalmanBH
and how he identifies himself as a Muslim yet says that Islam is man-made language used to 'express the inexpressible', in other words, a way to express faith.
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In which he advocates interpreting texts in any way you want and cherry picking in any way you want.

Which would be fine apart from the fact that these texts are supposedly divinely inspired and as such written by or under the direct instruction of a divine being incapable of error. Given that how can bits be wrong to the degree that we ignore them.

He is simply brushing aside one of the core flaws in the whole divine being argument as if its nothing, and the interviewer does little to nothing to challenge this.
 
mistersafeway
I doubt it'll be lifted after the deliberately misleading posts and wilful mutilation of the meanings of words. Well, that or attempting to have a debate about concepts that were well above his level of skill with the English language, but he vehemently denied that possibility.
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You mean the debate about the definition of belief?

mistersafeway
'A lack of belief is a belief.' What a ridiculous argument, it always makes me despair for the intellectual heritage of this era to see nonsense like that given any sort of media coverage. I'm glad I won't be alive in 200 years to hear everyone call us all stupid based on people like Aslan who can't understand how someone can live without believing (in a religious sense) one way or the other. Hopefully he's just confusing lack of belief for believing negatively, but if he is then he still has no right to discuss atheism on any meaningful level. I'm an atheist and I don't know whether God/god/gods/FSM/IPU exist or not, I think not as there's no evidence, but I don't believe (can one truly believe a negative without proof for the positive? Religious faith requires that there be no real evidence, sooo... :boggled:).
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I do not understand why you think how a lack of belief in a higher being is not a belief system is a ridiculous argument. I would urge you to watch the interview if you have not already before you make this judgement and refer to his viewpoints rather than accuse him of saying 'stupid' things without having strong reasoning as to why he thinks the way he does.


Scaff
In which he advocates interpreting texts in any way you want and cherry picking in any way you want.

Which would be fine apart from the fact that these texts are supposedly divinely inspired and as such written by or under the direct instruction of a divine being incapable of error. Given that how can bits be wrong to the degree that we ignore them.

He is simply brushing aside one of the core flaws in the whole divine being argument as if its nothing, and the interviewer does little to nothing to challenge this.
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The cherry picking was exactly what he was criticising in the first place when he was mentioning the most literal of literalists along with the hardcore fundamentalists.

Also, Professor Aslan was talking about how all religions are man-made, as I mentioned before. This is exactly why it IS fine to interpret these texts in any way from his point of view, but I do understand where you are coming from with that point.
 
SalmanBH
I do not understand why you think how a lack of belief in a higher being is not a belief system is a ridiculous argument. I would urge you to watch the interview if you have not already before you make this judgement and refer to his viewpoints rather than accuse him of saying 'stupid' things without having strong reasoning as to why he thinks the way he does.
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So wait, you do think lack of a belief is a belief? If so, I urge you to think about that sentence for a while, and question whether or not it really makes any sense at all.

Compare it to the claim that bald is a hair color. Is that a rational argument either?
 
SalmanBH
I do not understand why you think how a lack of belief in a higher being is not a belief system is a ridiculous argument. I would urge you to watch the interview if you have not already before you make this judgement and refer to his viewpoints rather than accuse him of saying 'stupid' things without having strong reasoning as to why he thinks the way he does.
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Lack of belief is not belief. It's a lack of it.

Just to revisit this again, there are people who believe in deities (a belief), people who believe in no deities (a belief) and people who do not believe in deities (no belief). At the most basic level, we call these people theists, nontheists and atheists respectively.

To draw you an analogy, imagine a drinking glass which appears to be empty - but it may contain a liquid with a refractivity index such that how it affects light from within the glass renders it invisible.
Theists, without considering any evidence, believe that the glass contains a liquid, only you can't see or touch the liquid. Some believe it's water, some believe it's hydrofluoric acid, some believe it's vodka - other flavours are also available. These are your religions.
Nontheists, without considering any evidence, believe that the glass contains no liquid.
Atheists think that, based on the evidence presented to them, the glass contains no liquid, but really they'd need a bit more information to say either way.

Saying atheism is a belief system is insisting what atheists think is a belief too. It isn't. Though the conclusion that the glass contains no liquid looks quite like the belief of the nontheists, it's evidence-based and liable to be refined as the evidence changes.


Now, before he was banned for trolling, whatever the other guy was called was insisting that in his language "belief" is defined as the sum total of your morality. In ours "belief" specifically means a conviction or position held in the absence of evidence. Atheism is an evidence-led position and is thus not a belief. Any argument that says atheism is a belief system is wrong.

That's not to say that some people who say they're atheists don't have beliefs - they may actually believe there's no deities (so they're actually nontheists who mislabel themselves), or believe in ghosts, aliens, walking under ladders, voodoo, tarot, psychics and so on - but atheism itself is an absence of a belief in deities, not a belief in the absence of deities.
 
SalmanBH
I do not understand why you think how a lack of belief in a higher being is not a belief system is a ridiculous argument. I would urge you to watch the interview if you have not already before you make this judgement and refer to his viewpoints rather than accuse him of saying 'stupid' things without having strong reasoning as to why he thinks the way he does.
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Because its not a belief system, its an absence of belief.


SalmanBH
The cherry picking was exactly what he was criticising in the first place when he was mentioning the most literal of literalists along with the hardcore fundamentalists.
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Yet he is totally incorrect on this.

The bible states that children who disobey parents should be beaten and people interpret that literally enough to write a book that has resulted in death.

Only last week a christian interpreted the call to put witches to death literally enough to behead someone.

Oh and IS seem to be doing a rather fine job of being literal, as does the entire Wahhabi sect.

Yet he says these people don't actually interpret it literally!


SalmanBH
Also, Professor Aslan was talking about how all religions are man-made, as I mentioned before. This is exactly why it IS fine to interpret these texts in any way from his point of view, but I do understand where you are coming from with that point.
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Ah so its fine to interpret things in a violent an oppressive manner because they are based on a fantasy.
 
Reza Aslan and TYT are pretty dumb on the subject. Did you see the video from Harris in TYT? He just went there to put them in their place and to "restore" his image.

TYT and particulary Cenk Uygur are pretty biased on the subject of Islam.


3h if you have the "balls" ^^




And this for some laugh :D


warning: some bad language

 
zzz_pt
3h if you have the "balls" ^^
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Like if you have absolutely nothing better to do with your day?

I say that any video longer than about ten minutes absolutely needs to come with a summary so that people can decide if it's even worth their time. When the price of admission into a discussion is 3 hours, you're not going to get many people joining in.
 
Imari
Like if you have absolutely nothing better to do with your day?

I say that any video longer than about ten minutes absolutely needs to come with a summary so that people can decide if it's even worth their time. When the price of admission into a discussion is 3 hours, you're not going to get many people joining in.
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The second video is pretty much a summary. :) I've watched almost the entire 3h of video but in various ocasions. It was really bad to see Cenk being a clown but trying to look smart.
 
Funny thing I find is not that people hold such opinions but rather that they're willing to express them publicly under their real names where anyone can look it up at any time. That is rather fascinating.
 
Carbonox
Looking at those comments, one would've thought they were about a school shooter.

Also, can someone shed any light on why they're typing "G*d" rather than just God?
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The G*d bits rather funny if you just mentally picture the Jehovah bit from Life of Brian
 
Liquid
Blasphemy and / or taking his name in vain. I prefer to write god myself.
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Not to nitpick, but God with a capital G specifically refers to the Christian deity. ;) So that's why I, umm, rather uniquely capitalized it. (When referring to it as a he, though, I never write the H in uppercase, that'd imply he's got some supreme authority over me. Not until he shows himself)
 

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